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Well, I wouldn't say no math, but you don't need a huge amount.A basic grasp of Trigonometry would be useful, and an understanding of vectors will be a must.Other than that you can probably get by just on whatever high school algebra you know.

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Programming is translation, nothing more. Maths is only necessary if you want to tell the computer to perform complex mathematical operations, since you need to determine how best to translate these operations into a form the computer can understand.

I've developed games with only basic algebra. Anything that was outside my experience, I just looked up in a book, although you young whippersnappers have this 'interweb' thing now, so it's even easier! The key to programming is a solid grasp of logic and the concept of cause and effect.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are offering jobs in the industry who _do_ believe that maths is an important factor, so don't be surprised if you get asked maths questions in job application tests. If you're comfortable with mathematics, there's certainly no harm in studying it.

However, the need to develop 3D graphics engines and the like from scratch for each and every game you work on is decreasing. Middleware takes care of a lot of the grunt-work for you these days, and higher-level programming will eventually become the norm, not the exception.

I have no idea how old you are or when you intend to apply for work in the games industry, so my final point is this: study the industry, look at the trends and extrapolate from those to get a rough idea of what the future of game development is likely to be. This industry is still young, so it _will_ change, and fast. The best programmers are those who are willing to adapt and learn new tricks.

-- Sean Timarco Baggaley

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hi derek7First of all math is important for everything not just game programming.you must at least know what is vector and what is matrix and what they are for(you don't need to know how to implement operations on them).also a basic knowlage of Trigonometry.all of these stuff are just for beginning, but if you want to go into writing your own shaders or using physics this will be other issue.thanks

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It depends on the project how much math is required. I started programming in like 5th grade and I hadn't even covered algebra yet in school. So some games will require more math knowledge than others and some will require little to none. It also depends on how involved you want to get as opposed to using 3rd party tools to ease the burden. Just start programming and make the stuff you DO get and if you find that you don't understand a particular concept then start getting some books.

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Original post by staafThere is this funny thing about learning math. Before you learn it you see no reason as to why you should bother. But once you learn it you begin to see applications for it everywhere.

I totally agree.. I feel exactly the same way, now that I've begun programming for games compared to the time when I just did math, physics and programming as separate subjects. Now it's quite interesting, sometimes even fun, to learn new math and physics and then go straight to the programming for implementation of it.

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Original post by kariem2khi derek7First of all math is important for everything not just game programming.you must at least know what is vector and what is matrix and what they are for(you don't need to know how to implement operations on them).also a basic knowlage of Trigonometry.

Not true. I can make lots of programs without matrices or vectors. True, if you want to make, say, 3D graphics, those things come in handy, but the point is, you don't need them to make a game.

stimarco really summed it up nicely:

Quote:

It depends on _what you want to program_.

Programming is translation, nothing more. Maths is only necessary if you want to tell the computer to perform complex mathematical operations, since you need to determine how best to translate these operations into a form the computer can understand.

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